Inside
by Rathead
Summary: Between five and six.


Disclaimers:  Characters aren't mine, etc., property of Mutant Enemy, etc., there's only one Joss Whedon, etc. etc.

            "Dawnie, do you want a smoothie?" Tara asked.  Dawn gave her a polite smile.

            "No, I think I'm all smoothied out, thanks."

            Tara nodded. "Movie time?"

            "Movie time," Dawn said.  She let her hands fall to her sides.

            It was Tuesday, which meant Tara without Willow, and tomorrow would be Willow without Tara, although Thursday and Friday were the two of them together. Sunday and Monday were Xander and Anya, although that usually meant being dumped at Giles's unless she felt like being dragged all over creation to look at wedding halls.  Saturday was most often a free-for-all, with whoever had time, which usually meant Giles_. _Thatwas the worst, because his attempts at brisk cheerfulness pained them both, and usually they wound up a careful distance from each other, him reading while she did her homework.

            They were taking care of Dawn.  They put food in front of her and she ate it, or, in Tara's case, drank it.  She went where they drove her, looked at what they showed her, watched the movies they brought.  They made sure she did her homework and wasn't alone when she came home from school. They gave her little tasks to do, and she did them.  They talked about the future, and she listened, because she knew that they wanted her to remember that she had one.  She knew they went out of her way for her, and she tried her best by giving them auto-Dawn, who at least spoke. Tara tried to keep her distracted, Willow tried to keep her focused, Xander tried to keep her entertained—Giles, at least, seemed to respect what she was feeling, but he had become very quiet himself lately.  She knew that it hurt him to look at her. 

            Of Spike, nothing had been said.  When she asked, they said a lot of words that didn't answer.  She didn't press.  Maybe they knew best, like they said, although she missed him.  In a way, it was like being looked after by a family of ghosts.  They swam silently around her, always either too near for comfort or too far away to reach, conversations fading into silence as she approached.  She felt big, clumsy in her body, and had started tripping over things.  Giles said she was getting taller.  She couldn't fathom why.

_            …doesn't want to play soccer…_

_            …best if he doesn't…_

_            … mother called and said…_

_            …probably in October…_

_            …not the type of contact… _

_            …up a steady routine…_

            Words that didn't mean anything kept pressing against her skin.  She wanted to tell them that it was okay if they kept talking about her while she was in the room, because she didn't really feel like she was in the room, but statements like that would probably get her sent back to that counselor the school made her go to, a young woman with curly hair who stared into a folder with Dawn's name on it and talked about the grieving process while Dawn read the slogans on the feel-good posters behind the counselor's head.

            "You take all the time you need," the counselor had said.  But Dawn was not friends with time at the moment; time was what had burrowed inside her belly and ate her from the inside until she wasn't more than a hollow shell made of skin so brittle it wouldn't take more than a sharp poke of a finger to have her splinter into a million pieces.  __

            Anya had nearly done it last week, while washing dishes.  She had turned around to Dawn, and asked, "How long do you think we're going to feel this way?  I mean, how long does grief last?  Because I don't want to have my wedding while we're all still like this."

            Dawn had frozen, dish in hand, staring at Anya's quizzical expression, until Xander took hold of his fiancé's elbow and moved her out of Dawn's line of vision.  He came back and took the dish from her hand, and rubbed her back for a minute, saying something Dawn didn't really listen to.  Then they had all sat down and watched another movie.

            Tara popped the tape into the VCR.  Tara was working her through the movie adaptations of Roald Dahl.  Willow was going through a Katherine Hepburn phase, and Xander and Anya were pretty much straight sci-fi.  Dawn felt that her brain was stuffed with unconnected sounds and images, giant robots zapped into oblivion over syrupy orchestral music, blue-white women with blackish lips blowing smoke at Cary Grant, as Mike TeeVee nagged, "Am I coming in clear?  I _said_, am I coming in clear?"  Sometimes she pressed her fingers to her eyes so hard that it almost hurt, to drive it all out—she wanted a dark quiet little box where there was no memory of her sister's face, her horrible haunting voice, no forced cheer of her friends, just a pure silence that had never had words in it.  Then someone would say her name and talk to her about a promise to be strong.   So she ate the food and watched the movies and wondered if this was what her sister meant.

            "Real witches don't eat children," Tara told her. 

            "Wasn't really worried about it."

            There was a pause.

            "Are you still going to do witchcraft?" Dawn asked her.  Tara looked surprised.

            "Of course."

            "What for?"

            Tara paused.  "What do you mean?"

            "I mean, we're not fighting anything.  So why are you still going to do witchcraft and stuff like that?"

            Tara fumbled for a moment.  "Well, I started doing it before I even knew about the Hellmouth, so...I –I – I guess I'm going to keep learning so I can get better at it..."

            "But what for?  I mean, are you going to tell people's fortune and stuff?  Or like, do spells for people when they ask you or just make things float 'cuz you're bored?"__

            Tara stared at the television for a moment.  When she looked back at Dawn, her expression was pained. 

            "It's what I do," she said.  "I can't not do it.  And you know, life needs to move…forward."

            Dawn turned back to the television.  The three witches, in frightful warts and noses, cackled and minced on the screen.  She didn't listen to any statements that talked about life with a capital L anymore. 

            "I'm going to go for a walk," she said.  "Around the block.  By myself.  Is that okay?"

            Tara's forehead wrinkled.  "Um…"

             "Giles said nothing is trying to kill me these days." Dawn said flatly.

            Tara flinched almost imperceptibly.  Sometimes when Dawn was bored, she'd say words to watch their eyes flicker.  Kill.  Dead.  Buffy.  Sister.

            "I'll be right back," Dawn said, taking Tara's hesitation for acceptance.  She grabbed her coat from the banisterand darted out the front door.

            Outside, the air had that burnt smell that always reminded her of fall.  A few dry leaves skitched down the dark pavement.  She dug her hands into her coat pocket.  She didn't want to go for a walk—it was colder than she had reckoned, but anything was better than being stuck inside watching another stupid movie with a stupid happy ending.  She wanted to see something real, for once; she wanted to pull them all into a room and show them a tape where at the end the hero dies.  All the heroes die.  There would be no flowers, no forgiving hugs from Mom, no beginnings of a beautiful friendship, just broken, quiet bodies.  The end.  Or—what was sometimes at the end of those Willow movies...finis.  Finis. __

            Her boots made soft scraping sounds on the pavement.  She plowed through leaf piles next to the curb, scattering them into the street.  The moon hung a few days short of full, looking lopsided in the sky.  She stopped and stared up at it for a moment, then turned her eyes to the streetlamps, placed every forty feet or so.  In the first Harry Potter book, Dumbledore had a little doohickey that put out all the streetlights, so he could move through the night unobserved by the Muggles.  She wanted one.

            She resumed walking.  Her footsteps.  Leaves on the pavement.  More footsteps…and alow, gutturalcry thatcut through the night.

            She ran into the middle of the street, feeling somehow safer if she was more visible.  She stood on the lip of the pooled glow from the streetlight, and looked around her, hair whipping around her face.  She started to back away towards her house, but a slight sound make her freeze, even as she knew she should run.  She stared into the shadows between the two houses to her left and squinted her eyes.  Then she smelled it—cigarette smoke—and Spike solidified out of the shadows, cigarette in hand, and a large axe slung over his shoulder.  He stopped about ten feet from her, and let the axe down, the head hitting the grass with a soft thud.  The two of them looked at each other for a moment.  Spike took a drag on his cigarette.

            "Where've you been?" Dawn asked.

            "Oh…" Spike shrugged uncomfortably.  "Took off for bit.  Went up to San Francisco for a week or two."  He looked back up at her, tilting his head to the side slightly.  "Where have you been?" __

            Dawn gestured vaguely behind her.  "Inside." 

            Spike nodded, still looking mostly away.

            "And at school.  School started."

            Spike nodded again.  "Right."  He paused for a moment.  "How is...school?"

            "What's with the axe?"  Dawn asked.

            Spike looked at it.  "I've been killing things."

            "Does it help?"

            "No."

            He hadn't come to the funeral, of course.  Dawn had told Giles that it should be at night.  She forgot to add that she meant so that Spike could come.  Giles had only looked at her for a moment, and then turned away.  She wondered now what he thought she had meant.

            "They think they staked yourself," she told him.  It wasn't true, although it might as well have been.  He regarded her narrowly for a moment, then snorted, a flash of himself.

            "They would.  Did you?"

            Dawn shrugged.  "What do I care?"

            He gave her a brief, cold, appraising look that made her falter in her pose of attitude.  He swung the axe back up onto his shoulder and turned to go.

            "Spike," she said.  He stopped and turned around impatiently. 

            "What."

            "You should have come by," she said.

            "So should have you," he shot back.

            Dawn was taken aback.  It had been some time since anyone had spoken to her with anything other than a hush in their voice.  Spike dropped the axe and started towards her.

            "The Watcher.  Red and Tara.  Xander and his personal demon. Your new family."  Spike spat the last word, getting up in her face, and Dawn started backing up.  "A little crew come over to Spike's to give him his orders.  You're supposed to grow up to be a fucking cheerleader.  I'm supposed to leave you alone.  A nice, normal life, that's what you're supposed to have."  A chipped black finger jabbed near her face.  "You're supposed to forget that there's anything out there in the dark…and well…" he stopped and stood straighter.  "Being one of those things—you can see why I wasn't invited to join in the movie marathons."

            Dawn looked at him as he stood in front of her, almost in a fighting stance.  That was what he did.  He fought.  He got blood under his nails, he hit things, he killed them if he could.  He could.  She started to breathe faster, and she could feel something deep in her gut threaten to boil over.  Suddenly, she hauled back and punched Spike in the face with all the strength she had.  It wasn't much, not enough to knock him down, but he staggered back with a startled grunt. 

            Dawn froze, eyes wide.  That wasn't auto-Dawn.

            Spike rubbed the side of his face and looked at her with disgust for a moment, then shook his head and sighed.

            "Did that help?" he asked.

            "Not really."

            He nodded.  "Last night, got seven of mine coming back from a laser Zeppelin.  Doesn't make difference.  Still," he walked over to the grass and picked up his axe, bringing it over to the curb, where he sat down and lit a cigarette.  "Better than sitting inside and...get over here, Sugar Ray, I'm not talking to myself."

            Dawn walked over and sat down next to him. 

            "How are they treating you over there?"

            Dawn rested her chin on her knees.  "Like someone died."

            Spike almost laughed.  Dawn raised her eyebrows and smiled faintly at him.  "They keep trying to cheer me up," Dawn said.  "I don't know...they keep saying all these things to me.  Things like 'Life has to move forward,' and 'Buffy would want you to be strong.'"

            Spike muttered something to himself.

             "I know they don't mean it.  I know what they're all thinking."

            "Do you."

            Dawn took a breath.  "For five years, they were fighting evil with Buffy.  Because of Buffy.  And now she's dead."  She kept her voice steady.  "And all they can think of is, well, yeah, she saved the world—and we're left with Dawn."  She said her own name with venom.  "All she does is _bleed_."

            "Hey," Spike said, slightly startled.  Dawn cut him off.

            "Come on, Spike, which would you rather have, a Slayer or a Key?"

            "I'm not really the best…"

            "Fine.  Don't admit it.  I'm the one who should'vedied."  She stood up.  "I'm the one who was supposed to have died."  She said it again, looking down at Spike.  "You all think it.  Buffy made this great sacrifice and now it's over and the world is exactly the same except there's no Buffy and everyone _hates_ it." She stopped.  Spike was nodding.

            "You're right." Spike said.  He blew out a cloud of smoke.

            "What?"

            "You're right."  He looked up at her.  "You want an argument? Go see one of the wicca. They'll pet your head and give you some more words.  You _are_ the one who should have died.  It was in the prophecy, or ritual, or what have you.  Blood of the Key."  Spike shrugged.  "Dead right."

            Dawn stared at him.

            "Course, it's a bit late for all of that now."  He flicked his cigarette away and stood up, facing her.  "Should have been you, should have been bloody anyone but her_—_well, not exactly news, love. Tell you what, though_—_you had tossed yourself into that hellhole, there wouldn't have been any Slayer to pick up the pieces when the dust settled.  Big sis was hanging on by a thread."  He looked at her for a moment.  "Dying is easier," he said, more gently.  "Sometimes."

            Dawn looked at him, not understanding.

            Spike sighed.  "You want to fight the good fight, you gotta be around to do it, don't you."

            Dawn lowered her eyes.  "I don't want to think that," she said after a moment.

            "Nobody does, sweetbread."  Spike bent down to pick up his axe.  "Why the hell do you think I've been out here chopping scaly things into bits every night?"  He faced her.  "If it had been up to me, I would have done it, and you'd both be here.  If I had meant anything."  He looked up at the sky.  "Getting late.  Better get you back.  Tara's night, right?"

            Dawn looked at him.  "You've been spying?"

            Spike gave his axe a practice swing. "Sworn to protect, you know.  Doesn't end just because your sister can't beat me up if I fail again."

            "You didn't fail."

            Spike just looked at her.  She remembered his expression on the edge of the tower.  He hadn't been afraid of falling.  She looked down.

            They started walking slowly back towards Dawn's house.  "Do you really think she...gave up?"

            "I think she didn't want you to die." Spike said after a moment.  "Don't think it mattered much how it happened."

            "She said the hardest thing…"

            "Yeah, I remember, pet."

            Dawn was silent for a while.  "Nobody talks about her."

            Spike didn't answer.

            "Or they talk about her like she was the president or something.  Or someone in some Greek myth."

            "Pandora," Spike said.

            "Who?"

            "Some Greek chippie way back in the day.  Gods made her out of clay…"

"You can't make people out of clay," Dawn said.

"No," Spike said with slow impatience. "_Gods_ made her out of clay.  Anyway, they gave her a box, told her not to open it.  Of course, since she was a typical girl and couldn't keep her fingers out of what she shouldn't, she opened it and let out every big bad you can think of.  Death.  Disease, starvation.  Man City, poverty, demons, headmasters, pain and suffering, cops, vampires, country music—you were probably in there somewhere—the French."  He thought for a moment.  "Thatcher." __

            "Not really getting the metaphor." Dawn said.

"Well, the gods just laughed about what she had done.  But there was one thing in the box they hadn't counted on."

            "Slayers." Dawn guessed.

            "They don't teach you Greek mythology in school, do they."

            "Not really."

            "Hope. Hope was the one thing not evil in the box."  Spike switched his axe to his other side a little carelessly and Dawn stepped away quickly.

            "So what happened to her?"

            "Pandora?  Don't know, really.  She had been set up from the start.  Maybe she got herself a stake and a cause.  Maybe she became a cheerleader.  Probably, she got smallpox. Or killed by a demon, and the gods kept laughing." Spike said.  He eyed her for a moment with the faintest of smiles on his face and said slowly,  "But she always had hope."

            Dawn looked at him for a moment, and then started laughing.  It was all so ridiculous and horrible and senseless, but at least it was the natural order of things.  This actually was her life, pouring from inside the box with every evil imaginable—she was, after all, walking down the street with an axe-wielding vampire.  But this was the life that her sister meant when she told her to live it.  Hope was a punch line, but she was in on the joke.  Spike didn't laugh, of course, but he smiled about as well as he ever did.__

            Dawn was still laughing when they came down the sidewalk to see Tara hovering anxiously on the top step, shivering slightly in the cold.   Dawn looked at her and sobered up.

            "Dawn...and Spike."

            Spike gave her a curt nod. 

            "Um, Dawn...you should get inside," Tara said.  Dawn looked at Spike ruefully.  He ran his hand through his hair. 

            "Take care of yourself, little bit," he said abruptly, and turned to go.

"Spike, wait."  Dawn walked up to the bottom step and looked up at Tara.  "I'm sorry I was out so long.  But I was safe with Spike.  He has an axe."

"I noticed that," Tara said.

"Buffy used to leave me with Spike all the time.  And my mom.  She would say, 'Dawn is safe with Spike.'  'Dawn and my mother are safe with Spike.'"  She looked at Spike, who was trying to look like he hadn't instigated this.  "I'm allowed to talk to him."

Tara pushed a lock of hair behind her ear.

Dawn walked back to Spike.  "If you want, I can come by tomorrow."

Spike glanced at her.  "Yeah, all right."  He walked off.  Dawn watched him for a minute, then turned back to Tara.

"You shouldn't have told him not to come over," she said stiffly.  Tara looked surprised.

"We just thought that with all that's happened it would be for the best." Tara said, looking uncomfortable.

"For who?" Dawn asked. 

Tara pursed her lips and looked slightly embarrassed.  "Dawnie..."

Dawn shrugged.  "Yeah.  I know.  You thought it was for the best.  Like there is a best.  We're all from the same box."  She looked at Tara as she passed her.  "Me, him, the French and hope."  She paused on the threshold, and looked back at Tara.  "Right?"

She went inside, and Tara, frowning, closed the door behind her.


End file.
